Email from James - November 22, 2010

Labas Family!!!

I hope you are all doing well in beautiful snow covered Utah. :D I wish it would snow here instead of the gloomy rainy days. But, The Morrels said that it's supposed to snow this thursday so we will see what happens. That will sure make transfers fun. We are getting three new elders to Lithuanian and apparently one of them is from Scotland so it's going to be so cool to have him here lol. There is some website called lds moms and Elder Leishman's mom talked to that elders mom so that's how we found out. Elder Leishman's mom loves that website were all the moms can talk together. 

Ya so as you know, transfers are this week and we are all really excited to see how it will play out. Algirdas hopes I will stay here, lol. I gave him a hug yesterday and his mom, Ala, said that she hopes I stay in Kaunas for a little longer and that she was going to cry if I leave. She is so nice to us. Ya for transfers, we get the calls wednesday morning and then have transfers on thursday. In Lithuania, there are 4 places to serve. Kaunas, Vilnius, Klaipeda, and Sauliai. The sisters only have two areas to serve in and that is Kaunas and Klaipeda. I hope I get to see a new area sometime soon haha. Lithuania, except for Vilnius, is still like this far off mistik land that I haven't seen yet. All I know is Kaunas and parts of Vilnius. Speaking of Vilnius, Zone conference was so so good. We had Elder Schwitzer come and talk to us. He is the East European Mission President. He was so so cool and gave such good lessons about how we could better contact and we got into a good discussion about how the book of mormon is true. It was a lot of fun. We stayed with one of the elders apt. while all the other misionaries got to stay at a hotel. hahaha . I wanted to go to a hotel but we had fun playing cards and eating brownies and ice cream. I really hope I serve in Vilnius. It's just like being in a huge downtown city. Big buildings, big signs, bright lights, and lots of lots of people and so many places to go and contact. I love being in the city.

Ya sorry about the spending spree, I had to get some things. I am going to send off the package for you all this week. I may need a little extra money for that cause with the coat it's going to way a little more and I have to buy a box. About 50 dollars should be plenty fine. Ya grandma said in her email that she mailed her package to president dance. I'm hoping hers and the other one mom sent will get to the mission home before the christmas conference. Our christmas conference is on Dec. 16-17 so it should. I'm just not sure when they are leaving for the other conferences for the other countries. 

Hahaha i'm glad Parker told me he got all that new stuff and that he isn't drawing on the walls. :D Tell him good job! I laughed so hard when you told me how he drew the same thing of no girls allowed like on the Little Rascals. He's such a funny kid. I love that he likes watching Samurai Jack and how they remind him of me. I love that show. I love listening to that CD you all sent me for my B-day. I have your tapes finished and will put them in your christmas package. I'm so happy to hear you made another recording CD. I'm very excited to get it. I haven't gotten the charger yet but it should come anytime this week. I'm hoping it will come before transfers cause I want to have a working camera :D

That's so cool to hear about all the baptisms you had and about the new family that moved in. I miss having so many members around in the neighborhood and so many people to befriend the members who are less actives and non-members. The branch just got reassigned to new people so we have a new branch president and counselors and a lot of new callings. That was way exciting to hear that yesterday. Wow, your at 4 years of tithing settlement. Time has really flown by. I still remember when I found out from the voicemail from Uncle John that you were becoming the Bishop. That doesn't feel like it was that long ago. That's so cool that Bro. Kelley is your executive secretary. He is so so cool. 

Oh the infamous Turkey Bowl!!! I'm so jealous. It sounds like you all had tons of fun playing. I loved going to those and playing football with everyone. I miss playing sports on p-day. All the other elders here never want to go play sports. The elders up in Vilnius always do which makes me jealous but eh we have fun. Hahaha ya i'm channeling my speed to you while I can't run here. Which kills me cause i'm dying to do something sportsy where I can run a little. Wow, Bro. Bentley broke his leg. That is crazy! It sounded way painful. Last monday elder leishman and I went bowling. We had so much fun. It's good to just do something that just takes your mind off the work and just have fun. We are going to go bowling again today which I am very excited for. 
 
I'm not going to lie, I was very happy that this email was very long. I love hearing all about how the week went and what's new. Elder Leishman takes a long time to email so I always get done a lot faster than him so I just stand around and wait for him to finish hahaha. It's a good thing I like him. I hope you enjoy the pictures. You can see what I look like in my new coat and some funny pics of our Halloween pumpkins. Mine is the more evil looking one. I tried to load some pics from the All Saints Day but they didn't work so I will just show you after my mission as a surprise :D 

But all in all, nothing new to report. I went on exchanges with Elder Cooke who is going home this week and we had a lot of fun. He's such a funny elder. They have a tv up at their apt. so we watched a the church history dvd which has short films about events from the beginning of the church so we were quoting those all day. Brigham Young is the best actor in them, " Who's kingdom are you trying to build? The Lord's... or Lyman Johnson's?" hahahah it's great. We haven't found any new investigators but we keep trying. We have walked and walked and walked and talked and talked and talked but still nothing. The elect are very good at hiding. I have begun reading Jesus the Christ. It's such a good book. I'm on chapter 5 already and I love it.  

I hope you have a great week. Thanks so much for giving me money and sending the packages and helping me out so much. Your the best! I love you all so so much.

Su daug mielu
    V. Sanfordas